Quicken 2014 Budget Category "Other" now "Everything Else"?

I just downloaded Quicken 2014 Premier R2 from Amazon and so far I am pleasantly surprised. It runs faster, they seem to have tightened up the budget coding so that more accurate information can be obtained. However they just had to change something.

In the budget planning tab in every category that has a subcategory there is now a category in each called "Everything Else". When I click the "Select Categories to Budget" on the lower left I expected to see that the "Other" category had been replaced with the "Everything Else" category but that was not the case. I believe that was the intent but once again somebody thought that Everything Else" would be better than "Other" and in the process of implementing that change they did so poorly. "Other" is still listed (and they are all NOT selected) and "Everything Else" is nowhere to be found.

I tried to highlight one of the "Everything Else" categories, right click and select "Remove Category" to delete it but ir is not removed. There are no transactions in any of the "Everything Else" categories so how does one delete them?

This should be an option when the program is installed or updated by having a popup ask "Do you want to add an "Everything Else" category to all subcategories, Yes or No.

Something is whacky because my Everything Else is over 1/3 of my total spending. You said: "Take a look at the categories included in the Everything Else amount, then add those categories to your budget. To do so, click the add icon (the green circle with the plus sign in it) to the right of each category and enter an amount." My "Everything Else" shows actuals of a HUGE NUMBER, but the single category under it with a green circle is only $74. If I adjust my budget to equal out Everything Else the number it looks like I have to spend a month is way too big. I do not want to add the zillions of sub-categories to my budget so there will have to be an "Everything Else" but how can I tell where that huge number is coming from?

marllynch4749 it was Quicken Tamara who gave you that information. My opinion on the whole "Everything Else" and "Other" categories are that they are unnecessary and make no sense what so ever. Below is Tamara comment, my comments are in CAPS******************************************************"Everything Else within a category, such as Auto Everything Else appears within a category if you've selected the parent category and at least one, but not all subcategories within that category. I SELECT ALL SUBCATEGORIES SO EVERYTHING ELSE SHOULD NOT APPEAR. It represents the sum of amounts spent or received in the unbudgeted subcategories within a category. Here are some things you can do with the amount: AGAIN SINCE I BUDGET ALL SUBCATEGORIES EVERYTHING ELSE SHOULD NOT APPEAR. Ignore the amount: If you are not concerned with the amount, you can just ignore it. IGNORING IS NOT AN OPTION. Reduce or eliminate the amount: Take a look at the subcategories included in the Everything Else amount, then add those subcategories to your budget; or, remove all of the subcategories and track only at the category level. I HAVE NO AMOUNTS IN ANY OF THE EVERYTHING ELSE CATEGORIES SO WHY IS IT STILL THERE? Budget the amount: Assign a budget amount to Everything Else to create a collective budget for all of the subcategories it contains. To do so, click the Everything Else line and enter an amount." WHY OH WHY WOULD I WANT TO ASSIGN A BUDGET AMOUNT TO EVERYTHING ELSE WHEN I HAVE ALREADY ASSIGNED THE PROPER AMOUNTS TO THE SUBCATEGORIES?**************************************************************You can prove this by making a backup of your current file (to restore after this test), then Budget all Categories in your file - even just $1 should suffice - and look at the results. Then restore your backup, to put you back to where you were before you did that exercise.**************************************************************The claim that is made is that you have to have a budget number (greater than 0) in every subcategory for every month for the entire year and this is just not a real world expectation. I do not for example have Auto:Service amounts for every month because they are not serviced every month in which case the amount is 0 but the claim is that this does not count as a budget amount and it is, IT IS ZERO!

Everything Else appears within a category if
you've selected the parent category and at least one, but not all subcategories
within that category. It represents the sum of amounts spent or received in the
unbudgeted subcategories within a category. Here are some
things you can do with the amount:

Ignore the amount: If you are not concerned with the
amount, you can just ignore it.

Reduce or eliminate the amount: Take a look at the
subcategories included in the Everything Else amount, then add those
subcategories to your budget; or, remove all of the subcategories and track only
at the category level.

Budget the amount: Assign a budget amount to
Everything Else to create a collective budget for all of the subcategories it
contains. To do so, click the Everything Else line and enter an amount.

In Graph View only, Everything Else within a
category group represents the sum of amounts spent or received in the unbudgeted categories in a category group. Here are some things
you can do with the amount:

Ignore the amount: If you are not concerned with the
amount, you can just ignore it.

Reduce or eliminate the amount: Take a look at the
categories included in the Everything Else amount, then add those categories to
your budget. To do so, click the add icon (the green circle with the plus sign
in it) to the right of each category and enter an amount.

Budget the amount: Assign a budget amount to
Everything Else to create a collective budget for all of the categories it
contains. To do so, click the add icon (the green circle with the plus sign in
it) to the right of the Everything Else line and enter an amount.

As we've advised on this Question, if you do not Budget all Sub-Categories, you will see Everything Else.

If you do not Budget all Categories within a Group, you will see Everything Else. To not see Everything Else, Budget absolutely everything on your Category List. There is no way to eliminate it entirely from your current Budget.

You can prove this by making a backup of your current file (to restore after this test), then Budget all Categories in your file - even just $1 should suffice - and look at the results. Then restore your backup, to put you back to where you were before you did that exercise.

EverythingElse is not other. I will give an illustration. Take a parent category Say "Auto & Transport"under it we have say 8 child categories:Auto InsuranceAuto PaymentCar WashGas & FuelPublic TransportationTollsService and PartsOther.

If you budget just the Parent category "Auto & Transport", On budget page , it will show you sum of all expenses of child categories which i listed above. If there is a $10 transaction against each child category, then you will see $80 as actual expenses against "Auto & Transport"

It seems you examples contradict what you are saying. In the 2012 & 2013 versions that you give the total for auto & transport would be the same as 2011, the total of the subcategories. In your first example what happens if you put something in the other category? The "other" category is for everything that does not fit into the other categories in the subheading. The "everything else" category means the same thing.

I too have an "Auto" category with several subcategories. I put in an entry for $70 and created the Auto:Other category. Guess where is put the transaction... In the "Everything Else" category not the "Other" category which I believe proves my point in my original post.

You have not addressed the real issue and that is why is is not showing up when"select categories to budget" is clicked and also how do I remove the "everything else" category which for me is useless.

If you Budget only the Sub-Categories, but post transactions to the Parent, that is when you will see Other.

And the answer to your question is this - If you don't want to see the Everything Else, then add all Sub-Categories to your Budget. If you don't want to see Other, then add the Parent Category to your Budget (or don't post transactions to the Parent - a less feasible solution).

Thanks for the reply. I have attached two screen shots from the planning - detailed view for my Auto category. The selected categories shows the categories under Auto that I have picked leaving "Other" unselected. The budget view shows what categories are shown on the planning screen including the unwanted "Everything Else" category. I am trying to understand your answer in how to get rid of the "Everything Else" category but it does not make any sense. Am I missing something obvious?

What does "Everything Else" mean that "Other" does not mean in the context of my Auto category example? I have looked in the Help and there is no clarification of this there either. All of my transactions are posted to the proper subcategories. If subcategories are present one should not be allowed to either budget or post to the parent category, this should be used by Quicken to provide totals only.

There are no transactions posted to other which is why I do not have them in my budget, How do I remove "Everything Else" as it is repeated for all catagories which have a subcategory in my case 45 times.

Tamara, thanks for the detailed response. I thought "Everything Else" was something new to 2014 but it is not. Point is in my Quicken 2013 R12 data file "Everything Else" NEVER appeared with the exact same information as was in 2014. I attached 2 new screen shots to my earlier post to show this. I removed 2014, reinstalled 2013 and the "Everything Else" was gone. Something was changed in my data file during the conversion from 2013 to 2014 that caused it to appear. I guess I am stuck with 2013 until this gets fixed unless you have any further suggestions?

"Everything Else" = any subcategory (of the immediate parent) not included in the budget ... including "Other". That is: including the parent is distinct from including "Other".

So (at least) 2 conditions can get "Everything Else" displayed: 1.) transactions using the parent category when "Other" is not selected for the budget.2.) transactions using subcategories, of the immediate parent, not included in the budget - including hidden subcategories ... which don't appear in the dialog to select categories for the budget.

[I do not know whether Everything Else is being treated differently in Q2014 than in previous versions.]

All I know at this point is in my 2013 R12 data file Everything Else is not there and when it is updated to 2014 R2 it is there. All subcategories are included in my budget expect Other. If I am interpreting this correctly if I do select Other and thus am selecting all of the subcategories then Everything Else should disappear but I now have Other displayed which I do not want either.

I can understand the need to know what transactions have not been assigned a category when entered but isn't that what the Not Categorized category is for? When budgeting would not one put "miscellaneous" items for a parent category into Other and if so then what is the use of Everything Else? I personally do not have these "miscellaneous" items so I have no need for Other and that is why is is not selected for inclusion in the budget display.

For the heck of it I selected Other is all of the categories, updated again to 2014 and now I have both Other and Everything Else displayed for every category that has subcategories. I uninstalled 2014 reinstalled 2013 and it was back the just Other, I then removed all of the Others using the Select categories to Budget and I am back to where I started before I tried to update.

You can not unless you select all categories and sub categories. I agree that it is a blunder, most probably as the solution to the 2013 roll up Rules. This does not carry to the Budget Report, I noticed Yesterday while working another thread.

there is one other solution which gives 2011 kind of rollups , deselect all parent categories and then go to "view options" and select 'Show Parent Category rollups". This will not show everything-else , But i as i told Parent category will just act like rollup of budgeted sub categories.

I worked most of the weekend on this and have found out the following. In 2013 you could still access the total amounts in the budget screen and change them, in 2014 this has been fixed, you can not longer access this which is as it should be.

Next I had to search for transactions that might have been misplaced in any parent categories in prior years. This proved to be quite a challenge for some categories but I moved all of the transactions previously assigned to a parent category to one of the subcategories.

Now for my Auto category for example if I include all of the subcategories, including other, Everything Else goes away but I am then stuck with Other whereas before both Other and Everything Else were displayed. The trick was going back through 15 years of transactions and fixing those that were in the parent category. There should have been a routine in the updating of the date file that would flag all of the transactions categorized in the parent category and then let the user put them into appropriate subcategories

Finally I checked to see if I could categorize a transaction to the Auto (Parent Category) and I could. This should NOT BE ALLOWED when there are subcategories present. You should only be able to categorize to sub categories and that would avoid this whole problem and there would be no need for Everything Else. Then you could use Other if you want or in my case not use Other.

"Finally I checked to see if I could categorize a transaction to the Auto (Parent Category) and I could. This should NOT BE ALLOWED ...".

I don't think this is a realistic expectation. If the Quicken budget process were predicated on this being true; what would happen to users converting from previous versions of Quicken, which did not - could not - have the restriction?

Quicken intends to handle actual amounts for parent categories by displaying those amounts in the "Other" child category. If you see the Other category in a report, and you don't like it; you can modify your data to cease assigning the parent category to transactions.

"Everything Else" would still be needed, since it is designed to capture amounts for all subcategories not included in the budget ... not just the "Other" pseudo-subcategory.

What happens to users converting from previous versions of Quicken would be exactly what happened in my case, hence my suggestion about the routine that could be a part of the file conversion process when updating to a new version. If one goes about creating subcategories properly they should be robust enough to handle all expected situations and when an unexpected situation does comes up then a new subcategory can be created. I have yet to see a chart of accounts with a category of Everything Else, Other or miscellaneous yes, but not Everything Else.

All in all 2014 seems to be a step in the right direction because many of the other issues with the budget screen that made 2013 somewhat of a nightmare to the uninformed have been properly addressed.

I always understood that parent categories should be treated as "group" level categories, just for subtotaling (I created my own "other" categories well before Quicken began doing that). But many users not only don't get it intuitively, but they hate the idea even when it's explained.

If they want to use parent categories in transactions, I'd let them. They can always hide subcategories in reports, if the subcategory display creates a problem. There's already a significant amount of complaining about Quicken protecting users from themselves. And this "problem" is not that hard for a user to correct manually.

Sorry you misunderstood or I did not communicate clearly, the routine would stop and let the user select or create the subcategory while the routine runs. No I would not want Quicken to decide that at all! As far as protecting users from themselves sometimes it is necessary to get good information and if explained clearly and concisely then they would for the most part understand.

My guess is that this proposal is not at all cost beneficial: relatively significant development costs; small, to no, user benefit.

Adjusting to the current rules is trivial. Understanding how to handle the current treatment of parent/child categories is based on the same knowledge the user would need in order to understand the conversion process.

I have been following this thread. fwffisher and NWJ. While working on another problem over at Get Sat I discovered that the Everything Else, while I consider it to be a pain in the ..., does have some uses that are helpful in testing. That carries forward into a real budget where you only want to track, say groceries, auto fuel and a few others. In a way, we can now select just the expenses we want to budget and put everything else, in my fixed costs, in Everything Else. It works well to keep track of your category roll over amount from month to month.

I do not know, if that made sense, but it is difficult to describe what happens to the balance column when you use category roll overs.